McKesson Joins Industry Leaders to Launch Groundbreaking Alliance

In the not too distant future, all caregivers will have immediate access to a patient's medical information regardless of setting or IT system. McKesson has joined with five leading healthcare IT companies to form the CommonWell Health Alliance™ with a goal to ultimately make each individual HIT system talk to each other. The agreement addresses one of the major barriers to cost effective, quality care.

McKesson joined with Cerner®, Allscripts™, athenahealth®, Greenway Medical Technologies® and RelayHealth to create the independent not-for-profit organization. It will develop a core set of interoperability services and standards that would enable HIT systems, regardless of supplier, to work in harmony across any care setting. The members will conduct a pilot of core services and standards in 2013, with the goal of formalizing the Alliance next year.

How McKesson is Supporting Stimulus

Since the stimulus legislation became law, there's been a flurry of activity, as two federal advisory committees - the Health IT Policy and the Health IT Standards Committees - have taken steps to define meaningful use and certification requirements.

McKesson continues to represent our customers' interests, participating in every Health IT Policy and Health IT Standards Committee meeting to date. We are also committed to completing the upgrades and implementations necessary to help customers achieve readiness and benefit from stimulus incentives.

We will continue to work with the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) and the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) to understand and support our customers' efforts toward achieving meaningful use of certified EHRs.

McKesson’s Comments to the Government

Want to learn more about McKesson's involvement? Read McKesson’s overview and comments to the government:

McKesson Educates Policymakers on Oversight of Software as a Medical Device

The Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act of 2012 requires the Department of Health and Human Services to develop - by January 2014 - a proposed strategy and recommendations for an appropriate, risk-based regulatory framework for health IT. The FDA, Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and Federal Commerce Commission must work together to develop these recommendations and report to Congress by the end of the year. McKesson submitted recommendations and took the lead in educating policymakers on Capitol Hill about the FDA's proposed regulation of medical software as a medical device.

As part of this collaborative effort - and individually - McKesson will continue to advocate for appropriate oversight of health IT, which meets the goals of supporting patient safety while also harnessing the power of technology and connectivity to transform healthcare. Read the Bipartisan Policy Center press release and its report on Patient Safety in Health Information Technology.